Blog

The current version of My CTS is 3.5.0 (bafb516e).

General

• Multiple bugs were mercilessly crushed.
• Arcade - Brave souls can now embark on an (not so) Endless Quest.
• Jobs - Improved user experience and form validation for when a job posting is submitted.
• Resources - Various resources have been migrated from the legacy portals to My CTS in the department's respective Resources module. This will continue over time.

Students

• My Account > My Bill - Pending charges(e.g. pre-registered courses and fees) will be displayed at the top of the page, whereas charges and credits applied to the student's bill will be displayed at the bottom of the page.
• Registrar > My Courses - Added a question to the Grade Report to assure the student has completed his/her course evaluations before viewing grades.
• Student Statements - Students will now start receiving periodic statements with balance information and recent account activity.

Employees

• Academics > Grades - Added instructional video for grade submission.
• Admissions > Legacy Applications - Moved the legacy Admissions Dashboard login from the legacy Faculty/Staff Portal to My CTS.
• Business Office > Reports - Added the Term Balance Report for tracking student progress in paying balances.
• Business Office > Reports - Added the VA Students report.
• Development > Legacy Applications - Moved the legacy Development Dashboard login from the legacy Faculty/Staff Portal to My CTS.
• Financial Services > My Financial Aid - Added the Student Profile to aggregate student financial aid information for administrators.
• Financial Services > Apply for Aid - Added more administrative tools.
• General > Course Offering - Employees may now review the course offering for unpublished (future) terms. These terms are typically still in development and are subject to change, thus course information reviewed in an unpublished term should not be treated as final.
• Registrar > Reports - Added a Course Scheduling report.

The current version of My CTS is 3.0.9 (36e4f0c6).

General

• Core system updates:
  • PHP updated from 7.x to 8.x.
  • Laravel Framework updated from 6.x to 8.x.
  • Dependencies updated. 
• Vociferous bug squashing.
• Updated various reports and things.

Students

• My Account > My Bill - Review pending charges that will soon be applied to your student account. Review the history of charges applied to your account, along with a running balance. See your current account balance and login to make a payment through our payment processing vendor. Setup a bank account for student account/loan refunds. Request a student account refund.
• Financial Services > My Financial Aid - Review and respond to Financial Aid Offer by accepting/declining offered awards. Review and respond to Federal loan eligibility. See the status of loan documents required for loan eligibility.
• Registrar > Registration - Pre-register for upcoming academic terms. Review/print an unofficial statement of term charges. 
• CashNet - Our payment processor (CashNet) has gone through a large upgrade to provide better information and service to students.

Employees

• Financial Services > My Financial Aid - Manage the creation, adjustment, and status of financial awards for students.
• Registrar > Reports - Added an NSLDS report.
• Registrar > Reports - Added Graduation Certification report.
• Registrar > Registration - Manage student registration.
• Library > Reports - Added a textbook list report.

The current version of My CTS is 2.30.5 (c55d7e89).

General

• COVID-19 Info - Resources updated.
• General Resources > Course Offering - Seat availability is now visible in the Course Offering, showing if a course's enrollment is currently full.
• Various bugs were squashed.
• Various improvements were made to increase efficiency and make things better.

Employees

• Academics > Educational Technology - Faculty resources for remote learning has been renamed and moved from the Launchpad to Academics > Educational Technology.
• Academics > Faculty Load - Added tools to assist the Academics Office with calculating faculty load.
• Academics > Grades - Added the ability for faculty to submit grades via My CTS. The pilot phase is being completed presently and more information will be given to faculty in the near future.
• Academics > Reports - Added a Course Offering Master List report.
• Admissions > Reports - Added the Student Lists report.
• Admissions > Reports - Added reporting for the Admissions funnel.
• Business Office > Reports - Added reporting for Business Office needs.
• Field Education > Reports - Updated and improved Field Education reports.
• Financial Services > Apply for Aid - Added administrative tools to manage the financial aid application.
• Financial Services > Reports - Added reporting for Financial Services.

Students

• Financial Services > Apply for Aid - Students can now apply for financial aid using the Apply for Aid module in My CTS. Contact the Financial Services Department for more information.
• Registrar > Request Transcript - The Registrar's Office has deployed a new method for requesting an official transcript, utilizing the power of the National Student Clearinghouse. Contact the Registrar's Office for more information.
• Registrar > Resources - Adde the Resources module to allow for linking to various documents and information.

Housing

• New housing requests can now upload more than three pictures.

In Queue

• Several large projects concerning One Stop (Registrar, Financial Services, and Business Office) are currently "in queue" as development is finished. Expected completion of these projects is Summer, 2021.

General

• Fixed lots of bugs related to My CTS, in general. These bugs are user reported, as well as through our automated error reporting system.
• General Resources > Course Offering - Improved response time by introducing caching features.
• Added the ability for deep linking, which allows links to pass through authentication and be redirected to their intended location.
• Experimented with randomly rotating student pictures as a way to enhance user experience.
• Determined that randomly rotated student pictures was not an enhancement to user experience. Rotated them back.
• Due to updates to Microsoft Azure, added a hyperlink on the login page titled: Reset your CTS password. Previously, this was not possible.

Jobs

• Fixed a bug related to the pagination of results after a search filter had been used.
• Fixed bugs related to the job submission form.

Students

• Registrar > My Courses - Added the ability to view Degree Audit (current completion of degree program) and Unofficial Transcript (record of courses taken to date). Additionally, advising staff can work with students to plan when to take particular courses, which will be displayed on the Degree Audit under Planning Term.
• Student Life > Chapel - Added support for viewing past Chapel recordings as well as the current week's livestream.
• Registrar > Registration Change Form - Added a form for students to submit add/drop requests.
• Student Life > Knowledgebase - Added a link to the Student Life Knowledgebase.
• Public Safety > Vehicle Registration - Added a link to the vehicle registration form.

Employees

• Various reports updated to reflect additional (or superfluous) information.
• Student Life > Student Risk - Added tools for assisting with management of student risk.
• President > Trustees - Added the ability to save the selected fiscal year when working with trustee data.
• Business Office > KwikTag - Added a link to KwikTag.
• Public Safety > Vehicle Registration - Added a link to the vehicle registration form.

The current version of My CTS is 2.24.6 (81d0b2ce).

General

• Slimmed down buttons within My CTS to add a sleeker feel and increase usable space.
• Made modifications to the deployment script to replace deprecated rules.
• Added email notifications upon user generated errors within My CTS.
• Fixed a bug that resulted from Microsoft changing the link to login to Microsoft To-Do.
• Added delayed deployments for production changes. This means that deployments to our production environment will occur in off-peak hours and no longer interrupt service during the workday. In the event that an immediate fix needs to be deployed, ITS still has the ability to force the deployment.
• Added email notifications for when a production deployment occurs.
• IT Services > Microsoft Store - Added a link to the managed Microsoft Store. These are whitelisted applications that can be installed on institutional computers without the need for administrator credentials.
• General Resources > Course Offering - Fixed a bug that was excluding Dissertation Preparation from appearing in the Course Offering.
• General Resources > Course Offering - Fixed a bug with the display of pre-requisites and co-requisites.
• Still making improvements to increase speed and efficiency across My CTS.

Jobs

• Squashed some bugs.
• Reworked the job submission form to include the ability to hide personal information at the submitter's discretion. This allows the submitter to determine their own level of privacy.
• Added more rich text formatting options in the editors.

Housing

• Added more rich text formatting options in the editors.

Faculty & Staff

• Registrar > Demographics - Added an administrative view to review demographics submissions.
• Home > My Schedule - When in the summer term, allow faculty to see the upcoming academic year's course enrollments as well.
• General Resources > Directory > Student Search - Added the ability for employees to search for specific students (past or present).
• President > Trustees - Fixed some bugs.

Students

• Registrar > Demographics - Squashed some bugs that were causing errors when students attempted to submit demographics.
• Home > My Schedule - When in the summer term, allow students to see the upcoming academic year's course enrollments as well.
• My Account > My Documents - Allows students to see the status of documents on their accounts.
• Academics > Bible Test Study Guide - Added a link to the Bible Content Exam study resources.
• Registrar > My Courses - Added the My Courses module which allows students to view their Degree Audit and Unofficial Transcript.

The current version of My CTS is 2.18.3 (c63187ee).

General

• Added various administrative tools to track My CTS usage and error debugging.
• Added COVID-19 resources.
• Refactored code in various modules to improve efficiency and load time and to decrease redundancy. Course Offering and Directory should both load much faster now.
• General Resources > Course Offering - Accommodated a situation where courses listed as MAIN campus but are being facilitated online (due to COVID-19) appeared to be meeting in a bogus room at specific days/times. The courses now appear as if they are meeting online.

Jobs

• Fixed a bug where contact email addresses attempted to take the user to a webpage instead of opening an email client.
• Fixed a bug where job postings that had expired were still searchable.

Housing

• Created Housing Opportunities for landlords to submit opportunities and for students to browse. The new Housing Opportunities site can be found at https://mycts.covenantseminary.edu/housing.

Faculty & Staff

• Research > Reports - Added additional IPEDS reports for online enrollment.
  
• Financial Aid > Reports - Added an Institutional Aid report.

Students

• Registrar > Request an Incomplete - Added a link to the Incomplete Grade Request form.

The current version of My CTS is 2.13.5 (8c328718).

General

• Now, when a user logs out of My CTS, they will automatically be redirected to the account selection screen.
• Added COVID-19 Resources along with a banner to Launchpad with a link (https://mycts.covenantseminary.edu/covid-19).
• General Resources > Directory - Added spouse information to the Student Directory. This information is viewable and intended for employees only.
• General Resources > Course Schedule was renamed to Course Offering.
• My Account > My Bill - The CashNet student user interface has been given a facelift - the new layout should prove easier to navigate for students seeking to pay their student account balance.
• My Account > Safe Colleges Training renamed to My Training.
• Added Action Items. These are notifications that appear in the top navbar of the Launchpad. They are intended to highlight items that employees or students have pending (e.g. applying for graduation). Action Items are currently being piloted and evaluated. As such, they currently have limited use.
• Fixed various bugs.
• The Arcade has Gone Fishin'.

Jobs

• Added Job Opportunities at https://mycts.covenantseminary.edu/jobs. This new job opportunity site consolidates the job postings from Student Life, Placement, and Field Education into one easy-to-find and easy-to-use interface. Those submitting jobs may do so completely online and administrators are given the ability to review and approve opportunities before they are posted.

Faculty & Staff

• Registrar > Grad Application - Tweaked reports.
• Research > Reports - Added headcount report for IPEDS reporting.
  
• Field Education > Reports - Tweaked reports.
• Business Office > CashNet Admin - Administrators can utilize test student accounts and easily login to both the training and production CashNet sites.

Students

• Counseling > Zoom - Added easier access for Counseling practicum/internship students to access Zoom.

The current version of My CTS is 2.10.2 (882d0c8a).

General

• Updated our core framework to v6.
• Added functionality to automatically update user attributes (name, email) when a name changes.
• General Resources > Directory - Fixed a bug with the PDF layout of the directory.
• Added a video introduction to My CTS on the Launchpad.
• General Resources > Course Schedule - Fixed a bug with date sorting.
• Fixed a bug that caused browsers to get confused if a user maintained a Microsoft account (e.g. '@live.com', '@outlook.com', '@hotmail.com') in addition to his/her institutional account. This caused a situation where login to My CTS (or other SSO enabled apps) failed with no option to try again. Now, institutional SSO apps filter out non-Covenant Seminary accounts as potential login options and users are only presented with the ability to login with a '@covenantseminary.edu' address.
• Added a new Job Board: https://mycts.covenantseminary.edu/jobs. This is a public website that allows users to browse for jobs as well as submit a request for a new job posting. This job board will take the place of tools used by Student Life, Field Education, Placement, and Human Resources.
• General Resources > Safe Colleges - Added a link to Safe Colleges, our vendor for Title IX compliance and training.

Faculty and Staff

• Academics > Panopto - Added a link to log in directly to Panopto.
• General Resources > Directory - Added Work Phone Number to be viewable by employees in the Faculty/Staff Directory.
• General Resources > Jobs Administration - Added a module for administrators to review and approve submitted job postings.
• Field Education > My Field Education - Created a new system for administrators in the Field Education department to manage the Field Education life cycle of students. This includes assigning students to Field Education representatives, managing the submission and approval cycle of ministry agreements and hours, reporting on student progress, and communicating with site supervisors.

Students

• General Resources > My Bill - Added a link for students to access their student account via CashNet.
• Field Education > My Field Education - Created a new system for students in Field Education required degree programs to view and manage their active ministry agreements and hour submissions as well as communicate this information to site supervisors.

Addendum

The My CTS menu has been reorganized.

The following modules were renamed:

• Rave Emergency Alerts was renamed to My Emergency Alerts.
• Asure Resource Scheduler was renamed to Room Scheduling.

The following menu items were added:

• Added My Account underneath Home and above General Resources.
• Added My Profile to My Account > My Profile.

The following menu items were moved:

• General Resources > My To-Do List moved to My Account > My To-Do List
• General Resources > My Bill moved to My Account > My Bill
• General Resources > My Emergency Alerts moved to My Account > My Emergency Alerts
• General Resources > Safe Colleges Training moved to My Account > Safe Colleges Training

There is a Network Infrastructure upgrade scheduled on Saturday 7:00am thru Sunday at 4pm on the weekend of February 1^st/2^nd.

This is a large overhaul of our network infrastructure to upgrade from 1GbE to 10GbE. This will result in a campus wide network outage across all our buildings. When the project is completed it will improve stability, increase network speeds and expand on redundancy between all campus buildings. 

System status during schedule outage:

Systems not accessible:

• Cams Enterprise / Web Portal
• GP Dynamics / Management Reporter
• Power BI
• Veeam and CrashPlan Backup systems
• All File Share servers (F1-F6, R1)
• HD ticket system
• Papercut system
• RD Terminal servers (RD.covenantseminary.edu)
• VPN access
• 3Com Phone system
• SharePoint (local)
• MyCTS Dashboard
• Wi-Fi access
• Internet Access
• NVR Security Cameras

Systems that will remain active:

• Email (Office365)
• Canvas LMS
• Panopto
• CTS Website (main) 
• Rave Emergency Alert
• Zoom

As always, IT Services is here to assist you. If you have questions or run into issues, please contact us at helpdesk@covenantseminary.edu.

The current version of My CTS is 2.7.5 (daf38007).

General

• Core framework and dependency updates.
• Updated documentation.
• General Resources > Directory - Fixed a bug which only pulled students if they were enrolled in a course during the current term. Now, the directory pulls students who are enrolled at anytime during the academic year.
• General Resources > Directory - Fixed bugs with the PDF version of the student directory.
• General Resources > Directory - Made a change to speed up load time of the faculty & staff directory.
• General Resources > Course Offering - Textbooks listed in the course details are now sorted by title not ISBN.
• [User Dropdown] > My Profile - Now displays the user's library card number.
• Have you visited the Arcade?

Faculty and Staff

• General Resources > Course Rosters - Added the student's campus to the enrollment information.
• General Resources > Course Rosters - Allowed selection of previous terms and limited future term selection.
• Home > My Schedule - Textbooks listed in the course details are now sorted by title not ISBN.

Students

• Financial Aid - Added a link to the Mapping your future website with various resources and tools.
• Home > My Schedule - Textbooks listed in the course details are now sorted by title not ISBN.

IT Services will be updating CAMS Enterprise on Friday evening (1/3) between 10:00pm and 11:00pm. CAMS Enterprise will be unavailable during this timeframe.

CAMS will be updated from version 19.3 to 19.4

Please be sure to log out of CAMS before leaving work on Friday evening.

Thank you for your patience as IT Services attempts to keep our infrastructure in good working conditions.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact IT Services at helpdesk@covenantseminary.edu.

CAMS updates have been completed as scheduled. CAMS was updated from version 19.3 to 19.4.

If you encounter issues or errors with your normal CAMS workflow, please send an email to the IT Services helpdesk (helpdesk@covenantseminary.edu) with the details of the issue you’re experiencing.

General

• Added a scrolling carousel with news items and links to the Launchpad.
• Added a notification that syncs with our emergency alert system. Now, when an alert (e.g. closing due to inclement weather) is broadcast to the website, it will also be displayed on My CTS.
• Updates to the core framework of My CTS.
• General Resources > Course Schedule - Now, users are able to pull terms up to two years in the past to view course offerings.
• General Resources > Course Schedule - Added a disclaimer about textbook purchases.
• Added dark mode.
• Added [User Dropdown] > My Profile with the ability for users to customize their home view with shortcuts to various My CTS modules. 
• Fixed a bug that created a 500 error when a user couldn't bind to Active Directory. This created an issue where the bad credential was cached by the browser and locked the user out of My CTS. Now, an error page is presented with the option to logout and destroy the session.
• Various bug fixes to multiple modules.

Faculty and Staff

• General Resources > Course Rosters - Now, the default is to display courses from the closest term.
• General Resources > Course Rosters - Various display improvements.
• Academics > Zoom - Is now single-sign on enabled and accessible through My CTS (My CTS > Academics > Zoom).
• Home > My Schedule - Now displays all four terms of the academic year (SU, FA, JAN, and SP).
• Home > My Schedule - Now has a printable (pdf) view.
• General Resources > Directory - The Faculty & Staff directory now displays employee personal contact information for employees only.
• Field Education > Reports - Created reports for the Field Education Department.
• Human Resources > Employment Change - Greater flexibility for administrators to manage requests.
• Public Safety > Vehicle Search - Added a module for Public Safety to search registered vehicles.

Students

• Home > My Schedule - Now displays all four terms of the academic year (SU, FA, JAN, and SP).
• Home > My Schedule - Now has a printable (pdf) view.

Friends,

Canvas login will require the user’s full email address beginning Monday, November 11.

--

On Monday, November 11^th, all students and staff will receive an announcement regarding the release of My CTS – a new single sign-on portal. My CTS seeks to tie together many of the systems and resources students and staff use at the seminary into one convenient place.

You may access My CTS at: https://mycts.covenantseminary.edu.

In addition to this release, IT Services will be changing how students and faculty login to Canvas so that it falls in line with the rest of our systems and infrastructure.

Here’s what you need to know:

The current experience:

• Users go to the Canvas website: https://covenantseminary.instructure.com (see picture below) and log in using seminary username (John.Calvin123) and password.

The new experience:

• After the My CTS announcement email on Monday, November 11^th, when users go to the Canvas website (https://covenantseminary.instructure.com), they will see a different login screen (see picture below) and will be prompted to login using their seminary email address (John.Calvin123@covenantseminary.edu) and password.

Why are we making this change?

• This change unifies Canvas with the rest of our institutional systems and allows it to be filtered through the Campus single sign-on provider. It also increases our network security by changing the protocols we are utilizing for authentication.

If you encounter students or staff that are experiencing issues or confusion, remind them to use their full email address (including the “@covenantseminary.edu”) to login.

As always, IT Services will be here to respond to confusion and concerns from our users. We may be contacted by sending an email tohelpdesk@covenantseminary.edu.

Tim Jackson

IT Services

Covenant Seminary

CAMS updates have been completed as scheduled. CAMS was updated from version 18.2.1 to version 19.3.

If you encounter issues or errors with your normal CAMS workflow, please send an email to the IT Services helpdesk (helpdesk@covenantseminary.edu) with the details of the issue you’re experiencing.